Southern Rail to reinstate services

The thundering mess that is Southern Rail is trundling back into action, and reckon that passengers will notice less delays and cancellations over the next few weeks.

Southern Rail customers, feel free to snort in derision any time you feel like it.

The train company is planning to reinstate over a hundred services - a third of the 300 they cut from their timetable in July.

Even so, the 48-hour strike which has been planned by Southern workers over working conditions is still going to go ahead next week, unless talks are successful in the meantime.

Charles Horton, from parent company Govia Thameslink Railway, says: "We know how difficult life has been for our passengers recently and we are sincerely sorry."

"Our aim has been to bring back as much of the timetable as quickly as we could and for several weeks we've had September 5 as our target to begin the reinstatement of trains."

"We're pleased that we can restore a large chunk of our train timetable for our passengers on this date but we will not be satisfied until the full timetable is running, and running in a punctual way people can rely on."